That is what I wanted thanks,I prime the while with a print \ndate now I just have to figure out how to get my hash values into my db and I should be in good shape, one thing thats really throwing me for a loop is that the date is a string, and I am having trouble figuring out how to make it a sql small date time. someone sent me a link to sql standards the other day so much stuff not sure where to look first. I agree which is why I was trying to figure out how to add it to a %hash previously as a key, this is a one time issue, I will be recording values differently in the future so that hash is well formed so should not be an issue again. however my data.txt file did not contain a date label so my hash was not initialized properly I wanted columname->value, and date is columname now I need to fix my input files, then I should be able to use variables to loop through and get my records into the db.

use Win32::ODBC;
use DBI;
$DSN="Ptest";
$db = new Win32::ODBC("DSN=Ptest;UID=ptalerter;PWD=Ha55le12;");
if(!($db)){
print "Error connecting";
exit;
}
else
{
print "Hey you are connected \n";
}
 $SqlStatement = "insert into AllResults (Date,Login,Searchload,Search
+Count,SearchResults,SearchSave,SearchDelete,SearchDetails,TaxLoad,Tax
+Results,TaxDetails,ClientAdd,CMALoad,CMASave,CMADelete,ClientDelete,L
+ogout) Values ('getdate()', '1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','10',
+'11','12','13','14','15','16')";
 if ($db->Sql($SqlStatement)){
     print "SQL failed.\n";
     print "Error: " . $db->Error() . "\n";
     $db->Close();
     exit;
 }
 while($db->FetchRow()){
     undef %Data;
     %Data = $db->DataHash();
      print $db; 
     
 
 }
db->Close();
 
close file;
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